Highly dispersed antimonene oxide quantum dots and their hybrid gel glasses for broadband nonlinear optical limiting

Abstract

In this work, we have prepared antimonene oxide quantum dots and their hybrid ormosil gel glasses by using liquid-phase antimony exfoliation and sol–gel methods, respectively. Due to their having hydroxyl groups and due to the small size of the nanodots, the antimonene oxide quantum dots showed good compatibility and high dispersibility in liquid and solid media. These gel glasses showed high transparency and uniformity, and concentrations of dopant quantum dots as high as 2.00 wt% were achieved. These quantum dots and their hybrid gel glasses exhibited outstanding optical limiting performance in the visible, mid-wave, and near-infrared regions (532–1570 nm). The mechanism of optical limiting includes nonlinear absorption, nonlinear refraction, and nonlinear scattering, and these results might find numerous promising applications in many fields such as laser protection and laser shaping.